Margrave of the Marshes : John Peel : 9780593052525 Margrave of the Marshes By (author) John Peel , By (author) Sheila Ravenscroft Share Try AbeBooks Description Despite the number of claims in publishers blurbs, not many people actually achieve the status of legend in their own lifetime. Fewer still actually deserve that status. John Peel is the exception which proves that rule, a Great Briton whose contribution to British culture is undeniable, without whom popular culture would never have become popular. Beloved by millions - whether for his unstinting championing of musical talent on Radio 1 or for his wildly popular Radio 4 show "Home Truths" - this is the astonishing book he began to write before his untimely death in October 2004, completed by the woman who knew him best, his wife Sheila. The first half of the book, written by John, describes with characteristic humour his early life, from child to man, including his school days and National Service. You can hear the unique Peel voice in every sentence - rarely, if ever, before has a voice been so successfully transferred to paper.

The second section, written by Peel's wife and soulmate of many years, Sheila Ravenscroft, gives us an intimate portrait of the man and his music, and the highs and the lows of everyday life at Peel Acres. The completion of this book has been a labour of love for John's family and their passion has paid off. It's every bit as extraordinary as the man himself and a fitting tribute to a bona fide legend. show more Product details 156 x 238 x 46mm | 879.98g Publication date Margrave of the Marshes : John Peel : 9781856868402 Margrave of the Marshes By (author) John Peel , By (author) Sheila Ravenscroft Share Try AbeBooks Description Despite the number of claims in publishers blurbs, not many people actually achieve the status of legend in their own lifetime. Fewer still actually deserve that status. John Peel is the exception which proves that rule, a Great Briton whose contribution to British culture is undeniable, without whom popular culture would never have become popular.

Beloved by millions - whether for his unstinting championing of musical talent on Radio 1 or for his wildly popular Radio 4 show Home Truths - this is the astonishing book he began to write before his untimely death in October 2004, completed by the woman who knew him best, his wife Sheila. The first half of the book, written by John, describes with characteristic humour his early life, from child to man, including his school days and National Service. You can feel the unique Peel style in every sentence. The second section, written by Peel's wife and soulmate of many years, Shella Ravenscroft, gives us an intimate portrait of the man and his music, and the highs and the lows of everyday life at Peel Acres. The completion of this book has been a labour of love for John's family and their passion has paid off. It's every bit as extraordinary as the man himself and a fitting tribute to a bona fide legend. show more Product details Awards hotel throws book at feuding authors | Books | The Guardian Awards hotel throws book at feuding authors 'Desparate to win' ... Piers Morgan.

Photograph: Graham Turner Wednesday 22 February 2006 09.17 EST First published on Wednesday 22 February 2006 09.17 EST Close This article is 10 years old Literary award ceremonies, generally speaking, are not particularly boisterous affairs. This year's British Book Awards may, however, be an exception. The London hotel hosting the event, Grosvenor House, has asked for an "exclusion zone" between two of the shortlisted authors, Piers Morgan and Jeremy Clarkson , on account of their now legendary personal feud having erupted into fisticuffs at a previous ceremony two years ago. Both men are up for the WH Smith Book of the Year award, Morgan for his memoir, The Insider, and Clarkson for The World According to Clarkson. Morgan commented, "I am absolutely desperate to win, purely to see Jeremy Clarkson's face as I do a little celebratory conga on stage".

However, given that the awards are the British book trade's traditional vote of thanks to authors who make big money for its publishers and shops, it seems unlikely that Morgan will get his chance to dance: also in the running is JK Rowling's record-setting Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which sold over 2m copies on publication day alone. If money-spinning is one of the (unofficial) criteria of the awards, there can be no question of Rowling's worthiness as a winner. Last year's prize went to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Also up for the award this year are Jamie Oliver with Jamie's Italy, Sharon Osbourne's Extreme and John Peel's Margrave of the Marshes, which was finished after his death by his wife, Sheila Ravenscroft. The British Book awards comprise 12 different prizes and cover the entire spectrum of UK publishing. Far from the farce that is Morgan and Clarkson, for example, the Reader's Digest author of the year shortlist pits the Booker prize winner John Banville and Kazuo Ishiguro against Alan Bennett and Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

Crime writers get a dedicated prize, with PD James, Martina Cole, Mark Billingham and Lionel Shriver in the running, as do children's books, with Louise Rennison, Charlie Higson and Antony Horowitz among the front runners. In a reflection of the role supermarkets play in booksales - for good or ill - both Tesco (sports books) and Sainsbury's (popular fiction) sponsor awards alongside more traditional retailers (Borders and Books Etc cover history books; Waterstone's puts its name to the newcomer's gong). However, it is the current stars of the publishing world, Richard and Judy, who play the biggest role in the awards. Not only will they be presenting the ceremony, to be televised on Channel 4, but they will be awarding their Best read of the year award, based on the 10 books they have been covering in their weekly Book Club show. The Richard and Judy effect on booksales is now something of a recognised phenomenon. The latest author to benefit from the patronage of the couple is Kate Mosse, whose historical thriller The Labyrinth has become the fastest-selling paperback of all time after being featured in the second week of the current series of the book club.

The British Book awards are now in their 17th year but have only had a significant profile in recent years. They are widely known as the Nibbies, in reference to the pen-nib shaped awards that are given to winners. The award ceremony will take place on March 29 in London.

The shortlists in full WH Smith Book of the Year Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling (Bloomsbury) The Insider by Piers Morgan (Ebury Press) Jamie's Italy by Jamie Oliver (Michael Joseph) Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft (Bantam Press) Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography by Sharon Osbourne (Time Warner) The World According to Clarkson by Jeremy Clarkson (Michael Joseph) Reader's Digest Author of the Year John Banville (Picador) Alan Bennett (Faber and Faber / Profile Books) Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber and Faber) Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Phoenix) Amazon Biography of the Year Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft (Bantam Press) Next to You by Gloria Hunniford (Michael Joseph) Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography by Sharon Osbourne (Time Warner) Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters (Fourth Estate) Red House Children's Book of the Year And That's When It Fell Off In My Hand by Louise Rennison (HarperCollins Children's) ArkAngel by Anthony Horowitz (WalkerBooks) Eldest by Christopher

 Paolini (Doubleday) I, Coriander by Sally Gardner (Orion Children's) SilverFin by CharlieHigson (Puffin) Wizardology by Dugald Steer (Templar Publishing) Worldbooks Crime Thriller of the Year Lifeless by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown) The Lighthouse by PD James (Faber and Faber) The Take by Martina Cole (Headline) We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (Serpent's Tail) Borders/Books etc History Book of the Year Auschwitz by Laurence Rees (BBC Books) Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk (Faber and Faber) Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (JonathanCape) Persian Fire by Tom Holland (Little, Brown) Waterstone's Newcomer of the Year A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke (Black Swan) The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss (Pocket) The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (Little, Brown) A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka (Viking) Sainsbury's Popular Fiction Award Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (Orion) My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (

Hodder) The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (Vintage) The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella (Bantam Press) Tesco Sports Book of the Year Being Freddie by Andrew Flintoff (Hodder) My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes by Gary Imlach (Yellow Jersey) Race Against Time by Ellen MacArthur (Michael Joseph) What If I Had Never Tried It by Valentino Rossi (Century) PLAY.COM TV and Film Book of the Year Coast by Christopher Somerville (BBC Books) The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre (Hodder) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis (HarperCollins Children's Books) Rick Stein's French Odyssey by Rick Stein (BBC Books) deciBel Writer of the Year Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam (Faber and Faber) 26a by Diana Evans (Chatto & Windus) The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi (Bloomsbury) On Beauty by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton) Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (Viking) Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (Orion

) The Farm by Richard Benson (Viking) The Conjuror's Bird by Martin Davies (Hodder & Stoughton) Arthur & George by Julian Barnes (JonathanCape) The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice (Headline) Moondust by Andrew Smith (Bloomsbury) March by Geraldine Brooks (HarperCollins) Empress by Orchid Anchee Min (Bloomsbury) The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (Orion) Amazon.fr - Margrave of the Marshes - John Peel, Sheila Ravenscroft - Livres 5.0 Ã©toiles sur 5 Gone But Not Forgotten 26 juillet 2013 Par Simon Mac - PubliÃ© sur Amazon.com Format: BrochÃ© Achat vÃ©rifiÃ© And John Peel's Margrave Of The Marshes has only 3 reviews on Amazon ?

It is a remarkable book, unlike any autobiography that I've read before and made all the more extraordinary by the circumstances. Apparently, a record one million pound advance was paid by the publisher before John Peel set pen to paper. And then he upped and died on us, way before his time and before he could complete the last two thirds of the story. Most extraordinary is that the narrative, after John leaves us, switches from him to his wife in an almost seamless manner leaving the reader to wonder who had the most light hidden under the bushel. Recommended without reservation. If you grew up in England during the seventies or eighties, this is an essential documentary of those times. 3 internautes sur 3 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile 5.0 Ã©toiles sur 5 John Peel - world's greatest DJ and a jolly good storyteller 1 fÃ©vrier 2006 Par siliconvalleyguy - PubliÃ© sur Amazon.com Format: ReliÃ© Intro: Any DJ who can survive the axe at the BBC Radio One station in England for almost 40 years, has to be England's, if not the world's, greatest DJ ever!

John is credited with introducing an amazing array of artists to the British public - Captain Beefheart, Faces, White Stripes, all got their first UK airplay on his show. He died of a heart attack at age 65 while on holiday in Peru in October 2004. His Peel Sessions are best selling CD compilations of live shows, sometimes recorded at his country home in Suffolk. So here's a book, part autobiography and part biography - the first half written by John himself and the second by John's wife Sheila Ravenscroft, all this being because John died as he was midway through writing the book. And for us readers, in a sad way, this is a good deal since we get to hear from John and also from his wife who seems to have a similar "Peelian" sense of humour. If John had lived to finish the book, I'm sure we would not have been treated to his wife's detailed and witty observations. Myself, I grew up in the north of England in the fifties and sixties and used to faithfully tape (on an old cheap 2 track tape recorder) entire John Peel Top Gear shows and then listen to them over and over during the week as I slugged away at teenage homework.

He was the voice in the wilderness to us starved music junkies looking for "underground" and alternative music to counteract the bland pop music of the day. Even if you have no idea who John Peel is, this book can stand alone as a great introduction to English life - public schools (a.k.a. private schools here in America), British Army life, the BBC, English countryside living and John's beloved Liverpool Football club. Not to mention lots of good music references. Read the book and celebrate the life! (and don't forget to play some music, drink a glass of red wine and sing-a-long!) Reference - Peelacres.co.uk Peelacres.co.uk Publication Date: 3 July 2006 Through nigh-on forty years of laconic brilliance on Radio 1, a musical taste which defined a culture and his wildly popular Radio 4 show, Home Truths, John Peel reached out to an audience that was as diverse as his record collection. He was a genuinely great Briton, beloved by millions. John's unique voice and sensibility were evident in everything he did, and nowhere is that more true than in these pages.

Margrave of the Marshes is the astonishing book John Peel began to write before his untimely death in October 2004, completed by the woman who knew him best, his wife Sheila. It is a unique and intimate portrait of a life, a marriage and a family which is every bit as extraordinary as the man himself - a fitting tribute to a bona fide legend. Publication Date: 21 May 2009 John Peel is best known for his four decades of radio broadcasting. His Radio 1 shows shaped the taste of successive generations of music lovers. His Radio 4 show, Home Truths, became required listening for millions. But all the while, Peel was also tapping away on his beloved Olivetti typewriter, creating copy for an array of patient editors. He wrote articles, columns and reviews for newspapers and magazines as diverse as The Listener, Oz, Gandalf's Garden, Sounds, the Observer, the Independent and Radio Times. Now for the first time, the best of these writings have been brought together - selected by his wife, Sheila, and his four children.

Music, of course, is a central and recurring theme, and he writes on music in all its forms, from Tubular Bells to Berlin punk to Madonna. Here you can read John Peel on everything from the perils of shaving to the embarrassments of virginity, and from the strange joy of Eurovision to the horror of being sick in trains. At every stage, the writing is laced with John's brilliantly acute observations on the minutiae of everyday life. This endlessly entertaining book is essential reading for Peel fans and a reminder of just why he remains a truly great Briton. Publication Date: 4 Oct 2007 This is a story of teenage dreams, which, as any Peel fan knows, are hard to beat. Between 1967 and 2004 John Peel picked over 2000 bands to come and record over 4000 sessions to be played on his radio show. Many were young and had never been in a recording studio before, for some it was the start of an illustrious career, for others it was the only recognition their musical talent ever got.

For over 35 years the cream of British musical talent made the journey to the BBC's studio in Maida Vale, from Pink Floyd to Pulp, the Small Faces to the Smiths. And because John Peel was so respected his sessions took on a legendary status - they were a rite of passage that every new band wanted to go through. Unfettered by commerical pressure the Peel Sessions were a unique British institution - an archive of music that reflects one man's passion for finding and encouraging new music. Includes a full sessionography listing songs, band members and broadcast dates. Jarvis Cocker writing about his first Peel Session aged 18 (Wayne the drummer was 15): 'We travelled down to Maida Vale in a van driven by a very strange man we'd contacted via a card pinned to the Virgin record shop noticeboard. We'd had to borrow lots of equipment from a band called The Naughtiest Girl Was a Monitor 'cause we didn't have enough stuff of our own. The session was to be produced by Dale Griffin, who used to be the drummer in Mott the Hoople; I seem to remember that he was wearing cowboy boots.

I think the crisis point came when Wayne was attempting to get a home-made synth-drum to work that a friend of his at school had made out of a rubber burglar-alarm mat and an old electronic calculator - Dale Griffin looked at this 15-year-old kid crouching on the floor bashing what looked like a doormat with some wires coming out of it and just put his head in his hands. But to his credit, the session did get finished and after it, everything else started for me...' Publication Date: 2 Oct 2006 Includes the BBC Radio 4 serialisation of "Margrave of the Marshes", John Peel's part-written autobiography completed by his wife, Sheila Ravenscroft and read by Michael Angelis and Carolyn Pickles, plus a special tribute edition of 'Home Truths' in which Tom Robinson visits Peel Acres to meet John's wife Sheila and their four children. Not many people manage to achieve the status of legend in their own lifetime, and even fewer deserve that status. John Peel was one such, whose contribution to British culture is undeniable. His 40-year career on Radio 1 and Radio 4 reached a huge and diverse audience, and he influenced the musical tastes of millions.

Guaranteed to appeal to all John Peel's many devoted fans, these CDs are a perfect reminder of the genius of a man many regarded as the best DJ ever. Publication Date: 26 Oct 2009 It’s hard to believe that five years have passed since the death of John Peel. Hard because, in many ways, it’s as if he’s still with us, so inspiring was the DJ to legions of music lovers in the UK and far, far beyond. The records he played seeped into the minds of young men and women, who years later found that the roots laid by late-night radio sessions had sprouted into magical new musical shapes. To properly cover the breadth and depth of material Peel played on his Radio 1 show over almost 40 years would probably require 400 discs, but this four-CD set at least manages to convey some sense of the man’s eclectic tastes. He wasn’t always right with his recommendations, but at least he gave the bands in question a chance – there aren’t any DJs active today with quite the same ear for both the blissfully sublime and the stupendously bonkers.

Kats Karavan essentially presents four show-style mixes, with selections from the 60s and 70s, the 80s, 90s and 00s. Between certain songs up pops Peel with some words of wisdom, endearingly fumbling his lines occasionally, which does sometimes transport the listener back to those days of listening intently to every tiny detail about this limited-run seven-inch that was, apparently, so very amazing. There are well-known names and many which will be entirely new to many: Traffic and Free appear on the 60s/70s disc, rubbing shoulders with Deaf School and The Fabulous Poodles; on the latest, 00s mix, Bloc Party and Yeah Yeah Yeahs appear alongside Ball Boy and Bearsuit. Though the material is largely of an indie/rock slant, there are tracks from The Orb and Stereolab on the 90s disc, and Aswad on the 60s/70s, showcasing the variety Peel offered.

The most out-there arrangement though is Bong Ra’s frenetic Archie Bunker Disciples, which sounds like a broken Aphex Twin 33 played at 45, backwards, through an over-driven amplifier. Basically like a really angry Prodigy, then. While it was never going to be comprehensive, Kats Karavan does paint a fairly accurate audio portrait of one of the nation’s best-loved radio DJs. One hopes that the surprises contained within its intriguing tracklisting inspire a new generation of investigative listeners to get searching for new, often singularly brilliant sounds. Publication Date: 9 Oct 2006 Throughout his lengthy radio career, John Peel promoted underdogs from almost every genre - folk, prog-rock, reggae and punk to hip-hop, jungle, Madchester and Britpop. Released to coincide with the anniversary of his death in 2004 (12 October has been officially designated John Peel Day in the UK), Right Time, Wrong Speed is a compilation of tracks championed by the legendary jock between 1977 and 1988, focusing on the kind of music his name has become most associated with: punk, post-punk and indie rock.

Kicking off with The Buzzcocks' sprightly "What Do I Get", the first disc leads into a colourful selection of tracks from the likes of Stiff Little Fingers (their classic "Alternative Ulster"), Killing Joke and the Slits. Then there are other indie classics and curios including The Cure's "A Forest", Laurie Anderson's ambient/experimental "O Superman", Jesus & Mary Chain's haunting "Just Like Honey", plus tunes by reggae legends Misty In Roots, reggae-punks The Ruts and long-time Peel fave poet/humorist Ivor Cutler. The second CD moves into the 80s with tracks by Joy Division ("Atmosphere"), The Cocteau Twins ("Musette and Drums"), The Sugarcubes ("Birthday"), Gang Of Four ("Damaged Goods") and Grandmaster Flash's "The Message". A collection of genuine leftfield classics, Right Time, Wrong Speed is also a wonderful insight into the arcane tastes of a genuine -- and sorely missed -- broadcasting legend.

Publication Date: 2 Dec 2002 Taking over from Grooverider, the man behind the decks for Fabriclive Vol.7 is everyone's favourite steam engine-loving sexagenarian, Mr John Peel. After his memorable set at the Fabric club in February, the veteran DJ obviously relished compiling his relentlessly eclectic first mix album. Predictably, The Fall get a look in as do the Undertones with "Teenage Kicks" but as the cult vinyl manipulator flicks from techno to blues, then R&B to reggae via folk and funk, it proves to be a rocky ride well worth the fare. Quite how it all fits in to the dance compilation category is a mystery, but in contrast to the dirge of one-dimensional titles available, Fabric 07 shines bright with a free-form bristling energy that many DJs half Mr Peel's age can only dream of.

Where else would you find MC DET's feisty drum & bass fuelled "Hipsteppin" merging with the gorgeous soulful R&B harmonising of The Velvelettes "Needle in a Haystack" before the Bad Livers serve up a manic, banjo-driven, thigh-slappin' rendition of Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life"? With music culled from deep within the archives, Peel effortlessly transcends genres and decades with carefree abandon. Fabric 07 may well confound the feet but it's sure to rock the soul and warm the heart. Publication Date: 18 Jun 2012 This 3CD box set comes in a limited edition 10 inch square, old fashioned tape box-style packaging with a 28 page booklet. Includes exclusive sleeve notes by Irmin Schmidt and Ian Harrison Publication Date: 31 Oct 2011 EMI in partnership with the BBC are making available for the first time some incredible material from distinguished artists’ BBC Peel Sessions. Movement is the first in a series of Peel Sessions compilations.

It features 41 different artists/songs, covering the hugely musically fertile - and influential - period of 1977 – 1979. From the ‘year zero’ birth of Punk, Movement includes session tracks from such era-defining and esteemed artists, as: Buzzcocks, The Adverts, The Slits, The Skids, Wire, John Cooper Clarke - as well as those who transcended the pub rock scene, and influenced the punk generation, Dr Feelgood and Ian Dury & The Blockheads – and post-punk, electronica-influenced artists such as The Monochrome Set, Magazine, Joy Division, OMD and PiL, and a selection of reggae and Two Tone artists: Steel Pulse, UB40, The Specials, Madness and The Beat.

Publication Date: 22 May 2006 The Pig's Big 78's From teenage kicks to home truths - Telegraph From teenage kicks to home truths John and Sheila at their wedding in 1974 Peel called his wife 'the Pig' because of her snorting laugh By Mick Brown 12:01AM BST 06 Oct 2005 The broadcaster John Peel was familiar to millions, but his laidback style concealed a complex family man. Sheila Ravenscroft, his widow, talks to Mick Brown about Peel's loveless childhood, his public school days and their enduring marriage The living arrangements in the warm and comfortable Suffolk cottage that radio listeners came to know as "Peel Acres" perfectly encompass the two abiding obsessions in John Peel's life: his family, and his music. From the kitchen - pine furnishings, an Aga, a framed picture of the Liverpool manager Bill Shankly occupying pride of place - a stable door leads to the room that was Peel's personal sanctuary, the walls lined with thousands upon thousands of records; files, reference books and demo tapes covering every inch of the shelves and floor, all of them untouched since his death 12 months ago.

It was here, says his wife, Sheila, that John was at his happiest, music playing at full volume, a stopwatch in his hand, jotting down timings, the door open to the kitchen where he could see the family talking, laughing and arguing. One does not have to spend long in Sheila Ravenscroft's company to realise that whatever else John Peel might have achieved in his life, in marriage he was deeply blessed. She is a handsome woman in her fifties, immensely hospitable, forthright, quick to laugh, and, it is immediately apparent, the family's pillar of strength. Their eldest son William, 29, is in Newcastle, where he now lives. Thomas, 25, is in London, working on a television film about his father's favourite records, to be broadcast in November. Florence -"Flossie" - 23, busies herself around the kitchen, preparing lunch. Alexandra - "Danda" - who is 27, has come over from her home in Ipswich with her angelic two-year-old son, Archie.

"John so wanted to have grandchildren," says Sheila, "and I was so glad he was able to have Archie before he died." Radio 1 is turned to a volume higher than you might find in the normal household, broadcasting an interview with Alexandra about "John Peel Day" on October 13, when more than 200 bands - many of whom Peel championed in his role as the station's longest serving disc-jockey - will be playing across the country in celebration of his life and contribution to music, with the proceeds going to two of John's favourite charities, Shelter and Médecin Sans Frontières. The past 12 months, says Sheila, have been "kind in a way", the shock of John's death somehow softened by celebrating his life - bringing to completion the autobiography that he had begun but was unable to finish, and latterly involving herself in the plans for the various anniversary celebrations that confirm Peel's status as the most surprising of British broadcasting institutions. "I suppose the truth is that it still hasn't really sunk in," she says. "I can talk about John quite easily without getting upset, and it seems the most normal thing to do.

It's not until everyone's gone that it suddenly hits you that the whole reason any of this is happening is because he's no longer here. But had John died and nothing happened I'd probably be in a terrible state. So it has been very therapeutic." Peel had been planning to write his autobiography - which he'd whimsically entitled Margrave of the Marshes - for some years, but he always had a tendency to leave things to the last minute. Sheila and the children bought him a word-processor, but John, she says, hated being taught to do anything, and for a year it gathered dust until he finally resolved to master it himself. By the time of his death he had written around a third of the book, up to the point when he first broke into radio while living in America. It had not occured to Sheila to complete the book until she read a newspaper item, shortly after his death, saying that the family planned to do precisely that. "It was actually the last thing on my mind . . .

It was the children, not me, who said: 'Come on, if we all get together, we can do it.' " What finally decided it for them, she jokes, was William's observation that John's section ends in America with an anecdote about him giving a friend a lift to a brothel. "William said we had to finish it, because they couldn't bear anybody to think that's where John and I met." Reading Margrave of the Marshes one is strongly reminded of Peel the broadcaster: the laconic, amused tone, the self-deprecating asides, the mixture of erudition and whimsy. But one is also struck by what a deeply complicated man John Peel was - a man whose very name was a fabrication (he was born John Ravenscroft; John Peel was his DJ's nom de guerre); who did everything he could to sweep over the traces of his upper-middle-class upbringing; a public figure of enormous popularity who was forever racked by self-doubt; and a man whose devotion to family life was in diametric opposition to the emotional neglect he had experienced as a child.

Peel's father, Robert, was serving in the Second World War as an Army captain when John was born in 1939, later returning to take the helm of the family's cotton-broking business. John followed the family tradition of being sent away to prep school, and then Shrewsbury - an experience that left him with an abiding feeling of rejection, compounded by his parents' divorce when he was 16. A telling photograph once appeared in the Radio Times of Peel on his father's knee; it was the only photograph in existence, Peel claimed, "of either of my parents actually holding me, or indeed touching me. They weren't big on touch." His father, says Sheila, was "an exceedingly nice man", but incapable of affection; while his mother "was enormous fun, but more like a mad aunt than a mother". In the book, Peel notes simply that she was overweight and drank rather more than was good for her. "Yes, he was quite hard on her," Sheila admits. "There was an element of him being nervous of her. But then she used to say that she was nervous of him.

I think she felt that nobody had ever told her what to do with children." In later life, John would sometimes stay over with her at her house in Notting Hill (improbably, for a while she lived with the actor Sebastian Shaw, who played Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi). On one occasion, John left a pair of socks behind. His mother presented them to him on his next visit, neatly pressed and with a cardboard sleeve bearing the legend "Hand-laundered by Harriet Ravenscroft". "John never wore the socks again," says Sheila, "just kept them in his drawer with the little label. They're still there." At Shrewsbury he found the arcane rituals of public school baffling and annoying, and the demands placed on the younger boys by prefects, or monitors as they were called, intolerable. In the book, he describes how one monitor would demand to be masturbated - a sexual harrassment that culminated in a humiliating incident when Peel was actually raped in a public toilet in a cemetery on the outskirts of Shrewsbury.

Sheila says that throughout their marriage he would often talk of his schooldays, but did not mention the rape until three or four years before his death, when the family were sitting in the garden talking and John "suddenly came out with it". She has no idea why he had never mentioned it earlier: "It is rather bizarre. I'm not lessening the importance of it, but I think at public schools at that time there would have been a lot of the kind of treatment that John received, and he regarded it as almost part of school life." Peel must have retained some residual affection for the school, she says, because he often found an excuse to go back. "It became a family joke. If we were driving anywhere in a 50-mile radius of Shrewsbury he always found a reason to detour. And before you knew where you were you'd be in the grounds of Shrewsbury School.

'That's where the Fives courts are,' he'd say, 'and that's the lawn you couldn't stand on unless you were a prefect.' In more recent years, it would be: 'And that's where I was raped.' It became part of the tour." After Shrewsbury, Peel did National Service as a gunner in the Royal Artillery before being packed off to America by his father, ostensibly to learn the cotton business. It was there that his encyclopaedic knowledge of blues and rock 'n' roll, and what passed, in Texas at least, as a Liverpudlian accent - a distinct asset at the height of Beatlemania - gained him his first job in radio. He returned to Britain in 1966 and found work on the pirate station Radio London, before becoming one of the first disc-jockeys to be recruited to the new BBC Radio 1 - where he was to spend the rest of his life. He had been there a year when, in 1968, he and Sheila met. He was appearing on a television programme; she was in the audience.

At the end of the programme, Peel had a note passed to her: "Will you ring ***** Saturday morning. Peace." (Well, it was the 1960s.) She rang on a dare. "He said: 'I'll pick you up at five. It can't be before then because I have to listen to the football results.' He turned up in his Bedford Dormobile. We'd planned to see the film 2001, but he had to call in at the doctor's first. He came out and said: 'I've been told I've got jaundice and I've got to go straight home.' So that was our first date." Sheila was just 20 and attending teacher-training college. Peel was 10 years older, and separated from his first wife, Shirley, whom he had married in Texas. Sheila's parents, devout Catholics, were alarmed, but quickly came round to him. John's divorce became absolute in 1973, and they married the following year. Her father, Sheila writes, perhaps thought of it as "not so much losing a daughter as gaining a hippy with a plastic mouse dangling from his trousers".

When she and Peel first met, she says, nobody would have given odds on them being together 30 years later. They were "poles apart" in background, attitude, "everything". For all his attempts to shed his middle-class accent, according to Sheila, John still sounded like "a minor member of the Royal Family". She spoke in such a thick northern accent that "nobody could understand a word I said". And yet they found common ground. Peel was a man of deep and abiding obsessions, and reading the book one is struck by the statistical improbability of him ever finding a partner who would not only indulge his fanatical devotion to Liverpool FC and his passion for the more extreme numbers from the canons of Captain Beefheart, the Fall and Napalm Death, but actually match them with equal intensity. But Sheila was that woman. This was not simply a matter of humouring him. She would go to Napalm Death gigs even when John was unable to. She even assented to being called "the Pig" - the name Peel gave her because of her snorting laugh. But more than that, she gave him the emotional security that Peel had always lacked as a child.

Contrary to appearances, she says, John suffered from an enormous lack of confidence that afflicted him for most of his life. "If we were going out somewhere socially, he would get terribly nervous, thinking he wouldn't be able to cope. And he'd always push me in the door first; not out of politeness, but because he'd be so wound up. Once he'd overcome that initial fear, he could hold his own wonderfully and tell an exceedingly good yarn. But he always felt people would be thinking: 'Oh Lordy, it's him.' There was always this feeling that he was never quite good enough." He was also a man who could be easily hurt. Criticism of his programmes, or of his musical taste, would leave him downcast - and mystified. "If he had a record he thought was wonderful and somebody didn't like it, not only would he not understand, he'd be actually quite hurt." A man governed by a streak of sentimentality that could sometimes prove almost debilitating, Peel writes that before meeting Sheila he never cried: "But Lord," she says with a laugh, "did he cry once he'd met me." Almost anything, from Little House on the Prairie to a Liverpool victory, would move him to tears.

"We'd laugh about it. He'd be sitting watching some absolutely banal thing on television, and if we had visitors he'd say: 'Pig, come here.' And I always knew why. It was so he could hide behind me because he was crying. "The children made him very emotional. He'd be very close to tears if they said or did something that touched him. It didn't take much." The normal abrasions of family life could wound him deeply. Sheila recounts a telling anecdote of John being hurt when, on one occasion, Archie wouldn't go to him, and affronted when two of his children turned down an offer to go out with him to collect some demos. "He couldn't understand that they just didn't want to go. He took it so personally, because if either of his parents had ever said 'Do you want to spend some time with me?' he'd have jumped at the chance, because his parents didn't ask him to do things with them. "He wanted so much to have the family life he had not had as a child. But I used to say: 'Darling, we're not in a Kellogg's Cornflake ad.

Kids can be foul.' " When the children left home to go to university, John was distraught. He and Sheila drove William to Liverpool. On the journey back, Sheila thought she was going to have to take the wheel. "He sobbed all the way down the M62. He couldn't bear the idea of William not being around. But he was like that every time one of them went off and started somewhere." When Flossie followed her brother, Sheila drove her up on her own. "I left John here, and he'd been crying nearly all day on his own when I got back. I was so worried about him.

I said: 'You've got to stop doing this because you'll make yourself ill.' " Margrave Of The Marshes: Amazon.it: Alexandra Ravenscroft, Florence Ravenscroft, John Peel, John Ravenscroft, Sheila Ravenscroft, Thomas Ravenscroft, William Ravenscroft: Libri in altre lingue 5.0 su 5 stelle Gone But Not Forgotten 26 luglio 2013 Di Simon Mac - Pubblicato su Amazon.com Formato: Copertina flessibile Acquisto verificato And John Peel's Margrave Of The Marshes has only 3 reviews on Amazon ? It is a remarkable book, unlike any autobiography that I've read before and made all the more extraordinary by the circumstances. Apparently, a record one million pound advance was paid by the publisher before John Peel set pen to paper. And then he upped and died on us, way before his time and before he could complete the last two thirds of the story. Most extraordinary is that the narrative, after John leaves us, switches from him to his wife in an almost seamless manner leaving the reader to wonder who had the most light hidden under the bushel. Recommended without reservation.

If you grew up in England during the seventies or eighties, this is an essential documentary of those times. 3 di 3 persone hanno trovato utile la seguente recensione 5.0 su 5 stelle John Peel - world's greatest DJ and a jolly good storyteller 1 febbraio 2006 Di siliconvalleyguy - Pubblicato su Amazon.com Formato: Copertina rigida Intro: Any DJ who can survive the axe at the BBC Radio One station in England for almost 40 years, has to be England's, if not the world's, greatest DJ ever! John is credited with introducing an amazing array of artists to the British public - Captain Beefheart, Faces, White Stripes, all got their first UK airplay on his show. He died of a heart attack at age 65 while on holiday in Peru in October 2004. His Peel Sessions are best selling CD compilations of live shows, sometimes recorded at his country home in Suffolk.

So here's a book, part autobiography and part biography - the first half written by John himself and the second by John's wife Sheila Ravenscroft, all this being because John died as he was midway through writing the book. And for us readers, in a sad way, this is a good deal since we get to hear from John and also from his wife who seems to have a similar "Peelian" sense of humour. If John had lived to finish the book, I'm sure we would not have been treated to his wife's detailed and witty observations. Myself, I grew up in the north of England in the fifties and sixties and used to faithfully tape (on an old cheap 2 track tape recorder) entire John Peel Top Gear shows and then listen to them over and over during the week as I slugged away at teenage homework. He was the voice in the wilderness to us starved music junkies looking for "underground" and alternative music to counteract the bland pop music of the day. Even if you have no idea who John Peel is, this book can stand alone as a great introduction to English life - public schools (a.k.a.

private schools here in America), British Army life, the BBC, English countryside living and John's beloved Liverpool Football club. Not to mention lots of good music references. Read the book and celebrate the life! (and don't forget to play some music, drink a glass of red wine and sing-a-long!) Margrave Of The Marshes: Amazon.it: John Peel, John Ravenscroft, Alexandra Ravenscroft, Florence Ravenscroft, Sheila Ravenscroft, Thomas Ravenscroft, William Ravenscroft: Libri in altre lingue 5.0 su 5 stelle Gone But Not Forgotten 26 luglio 2013 Di Simon Mac - Pubblicato su Amazon.com Formato: Copertina flessibile Acquisto verificato And John Peel's Margrave Of The Marshes has only 3 reviews on Amazon ? It is a remarkable book, unlike any autobiography that I've read before and made all the more extraordinary by the circumstances. Apparently, a record one million pound advance was paid by the publisher before John Peel set pen to paper. And then he upped and died on us, way before his time and before he could complete the last two thirds of the story.

Most extraordinary is that the narrative, after John leaves us, switches from him to his wife in an almost seamless manner leaving the reader to wonder who had the most light hidden under the bushel. Recommended without reservation. If you grew up in England during the seventies or eighties, this is an essential documentary of those times. 3 di 3 persone hanno trovato utile la seguente recensione 5.0 su 5 stelle John Peel - world's greatest DJ and a jolly good storyteller 1 febbraio 2006 Di siliconvalleyguy - Pubblicato su Amazon.com Formato: Copertina rigida Intro: Any DJ who can survive the axe at the BBC Radio One station in England for almost 40 years, has to be England's, if not the world's, greatest DJ ever! John is credited with introducing an amazing array of artists to the British public - Captain Beefheart, Faces, White Stripes, all got their first UK airplay on his show. He died of a heart attack at age 65 while on holiday in Peru in October 2004.

His Peel Sessions are best selling CD compilations of live shows, sometimes recorded at his country home in Suffolk. So here's a book, part autobiography and part biography - the first half written by John himself and the second by John's wife Sheila Ravenscroft, all this being because John died as he was midway through writing the book. And for us readers, in a sad way, this is a good deal since we get to hear from John and also from his wife who seems to have a similar "Peelian" sense of humour. If John had lived to finish the book, I'm sure we would not have been treated to his wife's detailed and witty observations. Myself, I grew up in the north of England in the fifties and sixties and used to faithfully tape (on an old cheap 2 track tape recorder) entire John Peel Top Gear shows and then listen to them over and over during the week as I slugged away at teenage homework. He was the voice in the wilderness to us starved music junkies looking for "underground" and alternative music to counteract the bland pop music of the day.

Even if you have no idea who John Peel is, this book can stand alone as a great introduction to English life - public schools (a.k.a. private schools here in America), British Army life, the BBC, English countryside living and John's beloved Liverpool Football club. Not to mention lots of good music references. Read the book and celebrate the life! (and don't forget to play some music, drink a glass of red wine and sing-a-long!)

Question: Whose autobiography 'Margrave of the Marshes' was finished by his wife, Sheila Ravenscroft?
Answer: John Peel